Something worth waiting for
by QueenAnne
Summary: A change did Tristan good...but is he worth waiting for?


Author's Note: *Clears throat* Okay, here's the basic: None of this is mine, and all that stuff. I just seriously love Gilmore Girls (it drives my sister crazy when it comes on and I run around the house yelling about how much I love it)--so that's basically why I wrote this. I'm in the middle of another one, a much longer one, but this one's just a little fic that seemed to randomly come about. Whatever you do, don't flame. If you don't like the story, you shouldn't even go through the effort to press 'Review', oky-doke? Good. Now that we all semi-understand each other...read on, if you please! --Annest  
  
_________________________________  
  
Rory Gilmore was sick to her stomach. "Butterflies." What a joke. "Bulldozers" was more like it, she said to herself. She lay back on her bed and groaned.  
"When am I ever going to tell him? _How?!_" Her blue eyes sprang open at the shrill ring of the telephone. Rory reached out to grab the extension that sat on her bedside table.  
"Hey, this is Rory," she said.  
"Hey Mare. What's up?" a familiar deep voice came to her from the other end. Rory smiled and lay back down, holding the phone to her ear.  
"Not much, Tristan. What about you?"  
"God a date tonight. I don't want to go--" Rory's eyes closed, and her whole body seemed to sag on the bed. "--and I have a poli sci test tomorrow that I oughta study for. What're you doing tonight?"  
"Nothing. Yeah, I have a comm test," Rory told him. "I should study, too."  
"Great!" Tristan said. "I'll come over with some Greta's and we can work for a while?"  
"Yeah, sure Tris. Sounds fine. I'll see you in a few minutes then."  
After she hung up the blue cordless, Rory figured it took Tristan ten minutes to get from his dorm, Krause, to hers, Andelson, which were actually the closest dorms on the Harvard campus. However, Rory thought, it'll take him two minutes to actually get out of his floor, four for the lobby of Krause, one and a half to jog between the buildings and another four or five to get through the mob of girls that generally met him in the lobby of Andelson. So ten minutes was actually cutting it kind of close, she considered with a smile. Not to mention stopping at Greta's, the pair's favorite cafe.  
Tristan and Rory were basically best friends. Tristan'n'Rory, Rory'n'Tristan--almost everyone on the Harvard campus knew the well-known duo as "Trory." Rory had even seen guest lists for parties that merely listed "Trory" as one person.   
After he left for military school in high school, they had written what were actually friendly letters to each other, and when he arrived at Harvard for their freshman year, Rory found him completely changed. Their friendship evolved quickly and, contrary to the rumors that were _always _flying, platonically. They helped each other in classes, they studied together, they hung out all the time. Tristan had helped Rory out with planning Lorelei and Luke's wedding during their sophomore year, and she spent nights at the hospital when Janlan had a heart attack. Not to mention the billions of relationships that the best friends had gone through.   
Rory didn't date much, though Tristan still did. Once in a while, Rory thought back to high school, and his feelings for her back then. And, while they would sometimes joke about life at Chilton, Tristan had never again showed interest in her.  
That's where her problem came in, Rory knew. After being best friends three years, she was in love with him.  
____________________________________  
  
Tristan showed up at her dorm room in twenty minutes, "a record," he said quietly as he took the steps two at a time. He passed quite a few girls who smiled or said 'hi', batting their eyelashes at the guy dressed like an Abercrombie model. He would grin back, but his mind was on Rory.  
His heart was pounding as he nonchalantly walked down the hall and knocked on her door. He had this reaction every time he was with Rory--but Tristan had never mentioned it to her, or acted on it. _I probably never will, _he thought just as Rory opened the door.  
"Hey," she greeted him with a smile. Her hair was stuck up in a ponytail, and she word a Harvard t-shirt and a pair of his baggy sweats.  
_Lord she's gorgeous, _Tristan thought with a pang. "Hey you. What's going on? Don't you look sexy tonight."  
"Don't I always?" The pair fell quickly into their usual banter, and got to work on their respective assignments.  
"Okay, Mare, I'm sick of this! Remind me why I want to be a senator again," Tristan said plaintively and casually laid his head in Rory's lap. _Dugrey, if only you weren't so completely pathetic, _he admonished himself with a grin, but didn't move. Rory pushed a strand of hair which had long since fallen out of her ponytail behind her ear and looked down at him with a grin similar to his own.  
"Because you'll get money and nice cars and recognition and women'll flock to you, Tristan," Rory told him matter-of-factly.  
"Do you think women are the _only _thing in my life, Mare?"  
"Oh, I know they are!" she shot back with a laugh.  
On impulse, Tristan felt himself tense up. Too many emotions...too little said...too much sexual tension...the last was the worst. He heard himself retort with a comment that screamed of the beginning of a low, dirty fight.  
"You don't know the first thing about dating, Rory, or me! After all, how many times have you even gone out in the past year?"  
Rory's blue eyes twinkled, the moisture suddenly filling them evident. She lashed back out in return.   
"So now it's a bad thing for me to not want to be a brainless _bimbo _who dates player after played because there's nothing in her head?"  
"God, _Mary,_" Tristan stressed the nickname, bringing back its negative connotations, "it's only a bad thing because they only dates you get otherwise are with boring future-Bill Gates who can't carry on conversations with anybody but a librarian or anything besides a computer."  
Rory would have been offended, she would have ordered him out or left herself, but she was already into the fight, Tristan's calm eyes observed. He braced himself for what he not-so-playfully called "the Gilmore Wrath."  
"What's wrong with going out on a few dates with guys who have similar interests?"  
"Rory, your interest in coffee," he nodded to the cup in her hand, "and these guys' interest in computers aren't compatible just because they begin with the same letter of the alphabet."  
"And your interest in sex and the girls' interest in you ARE considered compatible?" Rory shot back with a snort, holding her coffee close to herself as if to defend it.  
"At least _somebody _has those interests," Tristan mumbled under his breath, though loudly enough for Rory to hear.  
"What the heck is that supposed to mean, Tristan Dugrey?" Rory's blue eyes snapped, and Tristan felt his heart twist. He loved Rory so much--but in some perverse way, it was if he _needed _these fights to cleanse his own feelings.  
"God, Rory--you wait around here doing your perfect Gilmore work and having perfect Gilmore fun in your little perfect Gilmore way! But you're waiting for something that even YOU don't know about. ARE you waiting for something, Rory? You can't even answer that!"  
"I'm waiting--I sure as heck know damn well what I'm waiting for, Tristan. I'm waiting for _you!_" she exclaimed. Tristan's eyes snapped to her face, hoping that her statement meant more. But Rory's eyes were blazing with passion, which Tristan mistook for angry. "I'm waiting for you because--"  
"Because you need somebody to wait on you? To kick around and drive crazy? I don't think so!" Tristan interrupted harshly. He swung the door open and slammed it behind him, pausing long enough to deliver his parting shot.  
"Because why? When you find out, look for me. I might not care at all, but you better look for me to tell me why, Rory Gilmore." Tristan leaned back against the wall outside Rory's dorm room with his eyes closed, and took a deep breath. It was mere seconds before her voice came from inside.  
"Because I love you, you moron!"  
___________________________________  
  
Tristan paused, a move equal to Rory's, who still stood in the center of her room. Then, faster than he would have ever expected, he burst into Rory's room, crossing powerfully to her and holding her head in his broad palms.  
"Say it again, Mare," Tristan demanded huskily, his blue gaze piercing into her own.   
Rory's breath caught in her throat again, and her heart pounded against his. "I--I love you."  
Tristan brushed his lips against hers once, twice, before crushing his against her lips in a kiss full of tense passion. Rory moaned sweetly, straining against Tristan as she twisted her arms around his neck. Her hands moved in his hair as Tristan gripped her waist, one strong hand resting smoothly on the small of her back as he pressed her closer.   
Rory issued a tiny moan, more of a gasp, and Tristan siezed the opportunity. He ran his tongue along her bottom lip and slipped it into her open mouth. Rory gasped again when their tongues made the electric contact, and she felt like she couldn't get close enough to him. Tristan and she fell back onto her bed, one of his hands supporting her head as they continued their embrace. One of her legs wrapped over his and Rory and Tristan kissed fervently until, out of breath, they broke away from the amazing kiss. He leaned his forehead against hers, planting little kisses along her cheeks and nose.  
"What were you waiting for again, Rory?" Tristan asked with a grin. Rory ran her hand up his arm lovingly, and she was cherishing the feel of being in his arms.  
"Oh, this one guy I know. He's kinda funny. He doesn't smell all that great, but I can get over that," she grinned back at him.  
Tristan's face turned more serious, and he looked deep into her blue eyes. "Promise you'll never get over _me, _Mare..."   
Rory pulled his head down to meet hers. Right as their lips met for a second time, she quietly murmured something.  
"I never have...I never will."  
  



End file.
